


if i loved you

by svitzian



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Bickering, F/M, Jedi Code (Star Wars), ObiTine Week 2020, Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi, Pining, hypothetical discussions about love, yes its pining even if they dont know theyre pining yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24965998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svitzian/pseuds/svitzian
Summary: Obi-Wan and Satine discuss what it might be like if they loved one another.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Satine Kryze, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	if i loved you

**Author's Note:**

> i've had this idea for a long time but have been lacking inspiration to write it until i saw the Seven Deadly Sins prompt for obitine week which........ kinda fits for pride because they're both too prideful to just admit that they LIKE EACH OTHER  
> anyways i wrote this very quickly and did not do much in the way of proofreading bc we die like men so. please bear with me. i hope you enjoy  
> YES the title is from carousel. i'm a loser i know

“ _Careful,_ ” Obi-Wan Kenobi hissed for what had to be the fiftieth time in a row, and despite the restraint she was trying desperately to exercise, this time, Satine finally whipped around to face the padawan, her lips pressed into a thin line, heels digging into the earth of the trail beneath them.

“I _am_ being careful,” she hissed back, matching his tone with ease and fixing him with a sharp glare of her own before she turned, trudging on through the heavily wooded path that would lead them back to camp from the small spring they drew their water from.

Obi-Wan, it seemed, was only incensed further by the curtness of her response, following closely behind her once again. “You’re not looking out for the roots. They’ll trip you up and you’ll spill the water, and we’ll _both_ have to go walk to get more.” His tone was pedantic, as though he thought her too foolish to be mindful of where she was stepping, and kriff, that only made Satine seethe more, her fists gripping tighter to the edges of the makeshift container she carried.

“ _You’ll_ make me spill the water, if you don’t _shut up.”_ Her tone was sharper than before, clearly no longer tolerating Obi-Wan’s constant prodding, as though he was _trying_ to aggravate her, and she huffed under her breath, shaking her head. “ _Really,_ Kenobi. You’re fretting over me as if—” A moment’s pause, an attempt to find the right words, “as if you _love_ me.”

_That_ had the padawan behind her finally stopping in his tracks, and even without looking, Satine knew the expression he would be wearing—wide eyes, flushed cheeks, surprised and embarrassed as he ever was when Satine caught him off-guard. She didn’t turn to face him, instead allowing the smallest of smiles to creep onto her lips as he slowly worked through his shock, and then, all at once, sputtered out a bewildered, “ _What?_ ”

“You heard me.” The thought, of course, was just as preposterous to her as was to Obi-Wan—they clashed _more_ than often enough to make it clear that there was _no_ compatibility whatsoever between her and this headstrong, arrogant, absolutely _insufferable_ padawan—but unlike her Jedi companion, Satine had the satisfaction of having the upper hand, of having achieved her goal of flustering the other, to help keep her demeanor as calm and cool as ever, a pleased smile on her lips.

For a moment, Obi-Wan was quiet behind her, likely processing the simple directness of her reply ( _really,_ he should be used to her by now _)_ before he finally found his voice again, this time fighting through his obvious befuddlement enough to speak a bit more firmly, a bit more boldly. “If I loved you, I wouldn’t _fret_ over you.”

Now it was Satine’s turn to pause, to be struck by _his_ words, and she, too, stilled where she had been walking, the satisfied smirk she’d previously worn replaced with a confused frown. For how accustomed she’d grown to Obi-Wan’s usual retorts, _that_ was unexpected, and careful to keep her grip on the pail of water in her hands, she glanced back at him, brows furrowed to demand an explanation. “What?”

Seeing Satine so clearly bothered seemed to have eased away some of Obi-Wan’s embarrassment, and he cleared his throat, standing just a bit taller and meet her gaze squarely. “I said that if I loved you, I wouldn’t fret over you.”

Obi-Wan’s repetition of his words did little to make them _any_ less present at the forefront of her mind, and she pursed her lips together slightly, speaking the words before she could think better of them. “What _would_ you do, then?”

The question was one neither of them had expected to be voiced, and Obi-Wan blinked, meeting her gaze again, and Satine had just been about to concede to him, to apologize for her rashness, no matter how embarrassed she would be to have to _apologize_ to him, to continue their march back towards camp without the victory of having cause Obi-Wan the frustration that made his cheeks color so, but then he was speaking again, this time distant and quiet, like the words weren’t truly his own. “It doesn’t matter. Jedi don’t fall in love.”

Satine huffed, and made no effort to hide it, just as she had made no effort to hide her disagreement with so many other aspects of the Jedi Order, the _Code_ that Obi-Wan so often spoke of. “You’ve told me so,” she muttered, and she would’ve crossed her arms over her chest if she wasn’t still gripping the _stupid_ pail of water they’d been made to fetch. “But that doesn’t matter. It’s a hypothetical, Kenobi.” _Why_ she was still clinging to this subject, she couldn’t say, but all the same, something in her pushed for an answer, raising her eyebrows in a challenge to Obi-Wan, if only because she _knew_ a challenge was something he would never say no to. “Or is your mind truly too simple to speculate on something abstract?”  
  
Insulting his intelligence was a failproof way to get him to speak up again, and it served her just as well now as it had so many times before. “That’s not—” His face grew redder, irritated at her challenge and at his own inability to respond, and he shook his head where words failed—and then, after a moment of silence where it became _clear_ that Satine expected an answer, he sighed heavily, _must he_ always _be so dramatic—_ “Fine.”

He didn’t elaborate, didn’t say anything more on the topic, and Satine raised an eyebrow elegantly. “Well?”

Her pressing did little to lessen the firmness of Obi-Wan’s frown, and, as though unable to remain stationary for this conversation, he pressed ahead on the path, slipping around Satine to take the lead. Satine, never one to lag far behind the action, and _certainly_ never one to let the Jedi escape any embarrassment, followed quickly after, remaining within earshot and close enough to overtake him if she got too frustrated with his pace.

“I wouldn’t… _fret_ over you, like you said. I would trust you.” It was an abrupt beginning, Obi-Wan clearly working around the awkwardness of his words, of the theoretical situation they implied, but Satine didn’t seem to mind too much, huffing softly.

“ _That_ would be new,” she muttered under her breath, the words only meant for herself, but from the redness that came now to the tops of Obi-Wan’s ears, just barely visible under the cropped shortness of his hair, she could see that he, too, had heard.

“I would,” he insisted, stating it as though it was a point he was actually _invested_ in proving, as though he cared about what Satine might think of his _entirely hypothetical_ love, and she frowned slightly, forgoing her argument to allow him to continue on, to satisfy the curiosity that was slowly building up in her chest, warm and hesitant and cautious. “And I would be—distracted.” Obi-Wan said that like a confession of sorts, and Satine couldn’t help but allow her frown to deepen, drawn in by the new and rather… _vulnerable_ tone to his voice.

“From your duty, you mean?” It was the most rational inference Satine could gather, and for as little as she understood about the often-inscrutable Jedi in front of her, she knew that he seemed to value rationality.

“From everything,” Obi-Wan corrected, but it was _gentler_ than any correction he’d given her in the past, not laced with harshness or ego or pride that _he_ was the one to correct _her,_ accompanied instead by a slight shrug, a moment’s hesitation. “Because I would be… looking at you. Thinking about you.”

_That_ had Satine stilling for a moment, stirring up in the depths of her chest something vulnerable, something strange and unknown, and for once, no retort rose to her tongue, no harsh remark to counter what felt like genuine honesty, genuine _vulnerability_ from the other—and stars, _that_ was something Satine had never seen from him, not through all of the fighting and hardships they’d endured thus far. She had little idea of what to _think,_ then, let alone what to _say—_ and in the end, she was grateful that Obi-Wan was shrugging again, speaking up a bit less awkwardly this time.

“And I wouldn’t know what to say. I would—” Here, he _chuckled_ , a far cry from the embarrassment Satine had initially hoped to cause but somehow entirely _welcome,_ if only for the pulse it sent to her chest, that foreign feeling tightening around her heart—“I would _try_ , I think, to tell you, but I’d never be able to.”

“Why not?” _Goddess,_ she didn’t sound like herself, too distant and quiet, too genuinely _interested,_ for once, in what _Obi-Wan_ of all people had to say, and Satine swallowed, finding a sudden lump in her throat.

“Because I would be a Jedi,” Obi-Wan replied, as though that fact were plain as day, and it _should_ have been, Satine blinking at the realization that she’d so quickly forgotten just _who_ the man in front of her was—a Jedi, a padawan, and a rather intolerable one at that. A flush came to her cheeks, warm despite every one of her efforts to dispel it, to turn her mind elsewhere, and Obi-Wan continued on, back to that objective, matter-of-fact tone that he would’ve used if they were discussing their latest strategy to evade the bounty hunters after their lives, a tone that seemed wrong, however, in a discussion about _love._ “I wouldn’t be able to, even if I wanted to. I have a duty.”

For whatever reason, those words— _I have a duty—_ weighed heavier on Satine than any other grievance she had with the Order, any of the _many_ objections she held to their Code, their way of life, pushing the wind from her chest as though she had been _struck_ , and once more, she swallowed, finding the sudden tightness of her throat even more uncomfortable than before. A moment passed like that, _something_ in Obi-Wan’s words, factual as they were, sticking with her, keeping her in a haze of emotion that she didn’t quite understand, before Obi-Wan was turning back to glance at her again.

“What about you?” There was that same mild curiosity in his voice that Satine had previously entertained, none of the bite that usually occurred in nearly every conversation they held with one another, and Satine blinked, unable to help how her own distracting thoughts had rather blinded her to the subject at hand.

“What?”

“What would you do?” Satine blinked again, once more failing to understand what was meant by those words, and Obi-Wan cleared his throat. “If you loved _me,_ I mean.”

If being caught distracted hadn’t been enough to fluster her, _this,_ the turning of her own question on her, would’ve been enough, the heat in her cheeks flaring up once more. “I hardly think that matters.” She tried for firmness, tried to convey how ridiculously irrelevant such a discussion would be, but she knew before she’d even finished that her attempts had fallen flat.

“I told _you_ ,” Obi-Wan pointed out, eyebrows raised in a way that was half petulant and entirely infuriating, if only for the fact that he was _right,_ he _had_ told her, and now… now, it was only fair that she did the same, regardless of how she might feel about doing so. Sensing his victory, Obi-Wan smiled slightly, stepping off to the side of the path, and in a rather practiced routine, Satine took her chance to pass him by, marching to the lead again so as to have a distraction from her own words, from the reality that yes, this conversation was happening.

“I don’t think it would be that different from… what you’ve said.” She paused, because saying _if you loved me_ wasn’t something she was too keen to do once again. Her words, rather obviously, were an attempt at deflecting, on placing the burden of her side of the conversation back on all that Obi-Wan had mentioned previously, but from his silence behind her, expectant and waiting, Satine knew that her strategy wouldn’t be successful. _Grand._ He really _was_ going to make her talk. She sighed, glancing down at the reflection of the water in her pail, rippling with movement as she walked. “Really, I don’t. I would be distracted and all that, too, though… maybe a little more fretful than you would be.”

_That_ seemed to draw Obi-Wan’s interest, _finally,_ and behind her, his voice was light and curious, and for how carefully moderated his tone usually was—a Jedi trait he shared with his master, as Satine had quickly learned—even he couldn’t mask the slightest stirring of interest. “Really?”

What about it was so surprising to him, Satine couldn’t imagine, and she huffed. “Could you blame me, after what happened yesterday?”

The memory was still fresh in _both_ of their minds, a hunting expedition that had dissolved into their typical bickering, which had _then_ ended rather spectacularly when Obi-Wan, too caught up in rebuking Satine’s point, had quite literally fallen out of a tree, scaring away their intended prey and leaving their stomachs empty for the night, and Satine knew without looking that Obi-Wan’s face would be red again with embarrassment, though this time… this time, the knowledge didn’t bring as much comfort as usual. “Good point.”

His concession left a silence between them that once more fell to Satine to fill, and she cleared her throat, continuing forward on her path with a newfound determination, now growing a bit more comfortable with the topic at hand. “Besides, I can’t imagine that I would ever tell you, either.” _That_ was something she was certain of, because the idea of her professing her love to Obi-Wan was even more absurd than the idea of her _loving_ him in the first place, though after a moment, she glanced over her shoulder once again, tone quieting somewhat. “Unless I were about to die, or something like that.”

“That’s grim,” came Obi-Wan’s response, immediate and genuine, the slightest furrow to his brow as though he couldn’t understand why Satine would, _hypothetically,_ ever do such a thing.

“ _Dying_ is grim. Love isn’t,” Satine corrected, fixing her gaze back to the path ahead of her, suddenly confident that she had said all she would on the matter. “And it hardly matters. This _is_ only hypothetical.”

A beat, and then Obi-Wan’s reply—“Of course.”

“You won’t be receiving any deathbed confessions, Kenobi, I promise you.” She tried to return the certainty to her voice, now, the same self-assurance she usually carried with her, intending on relaxing into the same constant banter they usually maintained, on leaving this moment, this unmistakably _intimate_ conversation behind them, but something, _something_ , that same foreign feeling in her chest, made her linger for one more moment, voice one more quiet acknowledgement. “If I loved you, yes, maybe, but…”

“But you don’t,” Obi-Wan replied, his voice equally quiet, and Satine stilled for a moment, wondering if it was just her imagination or if there was something _soft_ there, something that was maybe even _hopeful_ —

But the moment passed, as every moment does, and Satine cleared her throat, ignoring that odd tugging at her chest, instead standing firm and stating the obvious, stating the factual, the rational, once last time. “No, I don’t.”

Her voice betrayed no emotion, nothing but the calculated certainty she always projected as Duchess, and yet— _and yet,_ rather suddenly, in the pit of her chest, Satine felt _remarkably_ uncertain of her own words.

_Stars,_ was she in for it now.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading and i hope you enjoyed <3  
> if so please leave kudos or even a comment - they do fuel me  
> if you are interested you can find me on social media @G0NKDROID (twitter) and @dotnscal (tumblr)


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